Thread: online checker

i'm using winsock, is there a way to check if a machine is online without using ping, i would use ping but it seems like to much work to code so i am looking for another method. if anyone thinks ping is ........ then explain otherwise any other way of checking would be good. Thank you.

What about to resolve the adress to www.yahoo.com using GetHostByName (Winsock)

Doesn't use Ping! Needs Internet connection to do it.

no.....

I don't want to check if my machine is online, I want to check if a remote machine is online, that's why i was whining about ping cos it can do it but i'm not sure how to implement that into my program and it seems complicated. so, if anyone knows any other methods to check whether a remote machine is online, please say, ty.

Originally posted by joe90004
no.....

I don't want to check if my machine is online, I want to check if a remote machine is online, that's why i was whining about ping cos it can do it but i'm not sure how to implement that into my program and it seems complicated. so, if anyone knows any other methods to check whether a remote machine is online, please say, ty.

you could try just connecting to a port you know is open on that machine... that would tell you it was online...

That does'nt seem to work, it always outputs "No Error".

I know all that, here's the code i used in MSVC++ 6 :

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <winsock.h>

int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
  int is_ip;
  struct in_addr address;
  if( argc != 2 ) return 1;
  is_ip = inet_addr( argv[1] );
  if( is_ip != -1 ) {
    address.s_addr = is_ip;
    if( gethostbyaddr( ( const char* )&address, sizeof( struct in_addr ), AF_INET )
        == NULL ) {
      fprintf( stderr, "gethostbyaddr() failed" );
      return 1;
    }
  } else {
    if( gethostbyname( argv[1] ) == NULL ) {
      fprintf( stderr, "gethostbyaddr() failed" );
      return 1;
    }
  }
  puts( "Alright, reachable." );
  return 0;
}

and... all i seem to get is the failure msg. I run it like so in the console:

>onlinecheck cprogramming.com
OR
>onlinecheck [IP]

which always results in failure. Any ideas?

ok, it works, ty.